


Too Sweet to Be Sour

by McSpot



Series: Herb's Electronics [1]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Not Hockey Player(s), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 06:33:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14255040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McSpot/pseuds/McSpot
Summary: People usually assumed that James must have worked at a coffee shop because he enjoyed coffee. They also usually assumed that after working there for the past two years, James must have been pretty good at his job.All of those people would be incredibly wrong, but that’s what you get for making assumptions.Or, how James Neal, former hockey player, business owner, and world's worst barista, falls in love with a Dick.





	Too Sweet to Be Sour

**Author's Note:**

> Approximately 3+ years ago bluecamellia prompted me, "im about to go to bed and suddenly thought of a dicky/nealer au where james works at a coffee shop and dicky says something mean about his hair and james is so offended and just writes DICK on his cup and rich is actually really charmed and keeps coming back and ~ yeah." Suddenly about two weeks ago my brain decided it was a good time to write this.
> 
> I never thought I would write a coffee shop AU for multiple reasons. 1) They’re cliched and over-done, 2) The only coffee shop I have ever been in was Tim Horton’s and it wasn’t to order coffee, because 3) I don’t actually drink coffee. But I couldn’t get this idea out of my head because it’s too fitting, and I had a lot of fun writing this. All of my thanks to scribetuesday for the beta and for telling me how coffee actually works.
> 
> This story features: Beastie Boys references, OFC player girlfriends, cameos by assorted hockey players, two year old cakes that still look pretty on the outside, and a wildly implausible business plan that should not be tried at home, kids. This takes place roughly around the summer of 2014 and the following season, pretending that Rich Clune didn't spend most of the year in Milwaukee.

People usually assumed that James must have worked at a coffee shop because he enjoyed coffee. They also usually assumed that after working there for the past two years, James must have been pretty good at his job.

All of those people would be incredibly wrong, but that's what you get for making assumptions.

James had the dubious honor of being, hands down, the absolute worst employee that Herb's Electronics had ever had. There was a plaque on the wall behind the counter labeling him as such, with his picture and everything.

He was also really hard to fire, seeing as he owned a half-stake in the company, so when people asked why he still had a job there after he butchered their order for the third time, he usually just told them that he came with the furnishings.

Even James's family had questioned why he would want to start up a coffee shop and bakery in Nashville, seeing as he hated coffee and he couldn't bake and he'd never been to Nashville in his life.

The short answer was that Paul had inherited the building from a great uncle who used to sell secondhand electronics, and James and Paul had made a pact in college to start up a shop together that would allow them to combine Paul's baking expertise and James's business degree. It was difficult to find rent-free space in the middle of a metropolitan city, and the both of them had been looking for something that would get them far, far away from hockey. Nashville was as good a place as any to make a new beginning...even if they kept the name of the old store because they didn't want to pay to have the sign painted over.

The shorter answer was that Paul announced he wanted to open a bakery in Nashville, and James liked to eat what Paul baked, so James naturally had to come with him if he wanted to continue that arrangement.

The business idea was, on its own, fairly sound. Despite his occasional, ahem, lapses in judgment, James was actually pretty good at managing his own business. He could haggle with suppliers to get the best quality ingredients for the least amount of money. He could balance the books like a pro and make sure that the shop never went over-budget. He wasn't even half-bad at advertising, and according to their customer satisfaction surveys, a good twenty percent of their customers found them through social media.

After two years, Herb's Electronics had been able to successfully eke out its own little corner of the overcrowded world of coffee shop bakeries in Nashville. Part of that success relied on Paul's baking skills. People may have happened to buy coffee from them, but everyone knew that the only real reason you went to Herb's Electronics was for Paulie's baking (or if you were a very confused shopper searching for discount electronics). He specialized in muffins and cakes, but that didn't mean James hadn't seen people get into an actual slap-fight over the last of his blueberry tarts.

That wasn't even to speak of the time that someone bought them out of all of their gingerbread three days in a row in the week before Christmas. James had almost had to defuse a riot.

Part of recognizing that Paul's baking was their real cash cow meant that James, running the business side of things, had to maximize upon that skill. That meant things like taking special orders to not only increase their revenue but also help to spread their customer base. That also meant giving Paul time to focus on his baking by leaving James to do, well...everything else.

Starting a new business, they hadn't really had the extra capital to put into hiring other employees and taking on all of the added costs that came with that. This meant that James took on quite literally every non-baking activity in the shop. James delivered special orders (for a fee, of course) directly to your business or gathering. James swept the floors and scrubbed out the bathrooms and refilled the napkin dispensers. James maintained the website and updated the social media accounts and arranged for print advertising. James worked the cash register and responded to questions and complaints.

James was just about everything in the bakery that wasn't actually baking, so that Paul didn't have to be.

By nature of his numerous roles, James also happened to be the one in charge of making coffee.

That was when things started to get a little weird.

~~~

Paul and James had both agreed that if they wanted to be successful as a bakery, they probably had to offer some sort of coffee options. If they wanted people to come in and stay a while, they would probably have to offer options that were more exciting and varied than black or decaf. And if they wanted to compete with their competition, they would have to start offering... _specialty drinks_.

It was well-established that nobody came to Herb's Electronics for the coffee. Or at least, nobody who had previously had their coffee ever returned  _just_  for the coffee. Actually, according to their surveys, customers considered the coffee something that had to be braved in order to get a taste of Paul's baking. The smart ones only made the mistake of ordering coffee once. Only the most masochistic of caffeine addicts kept coming back for more.

There was nothing objectively wrong with the coffee. By all accounts the coffee should have been delicious. The beans certainly weren't cheap, and they were generally well-reviewed in the world of coffee-tasting.

Or at least, that's what James had been told. He wouldn't know. He found that most coffee tasted like licking a metal spoon, except the spoon tasted better. Also, nobody expected him to enjoy burning his mouth on the spoon either.

James didn't drink coffee. Actually, James didn't drink any hot drinks, because of the aforementioned issues of preferring to be able to enjoy his drinks without needing to sear his taste buds off beforehand to make them palatable. He wouldn't even drink hot chocolate without letting it reach nearly room temperature, a fact for which Paulie had threatened to disown him on multiple occasions.

(He'd yet to do it, so he probably didn't really mean it. Probably. Most likely.)

This on its own wasn't much of an issue. While James couldn't give customers recommendations or tell them what a drink tasted like, his own lack of affection for coffee wouldn't have harmed the overall product.

No, the problem was that in addition to hating coffee, James was, without fail, the absolute worst barista ever to step foot in Nashville.

He claimed that this was because he was self-taught using YouTube videos, but Paul said that it was a natural, God-given lack of talent.

"Nobody could be that bad at making coffee without it being some sort of divine intervention," he'd said.

James kind of liked the sound of that, because it meant that everything that he did wrong wasn't actually his fault.

The problem with being in what was typically a low-paying service job was that customers generally assumed that James was an idiot. His perpetual war with coffee only seemed to exacerbate that.

He wasn't stupid. He knew business, and he knew how to talk to people and get them to buy his product. He just really, really didn't know how to make coffee, and he had the stained pants and burn-scarred hands to prove that he'd definitely put in the effort trying to learn.

There were cheat sheets all over the counter for him, reminding him of the difference between a cappuccino and a frappuccino (the second one was trademarked by Starbucks so don't tell people you sell that), or the proportions of a latte compared to a flat white compared to a cappuccino (why did coffee have so much math?), or what milk was supposed to be frothed and what milk was supposed to be steamed and how to best avoid scalding himself (trying to convince the customer to order something without steamed milk was his best method for that so far).

Paul had started joking that they should institute a policy where a customer got a free cookie if James managed to get their coffee order entirely right on their first visit to the shop, because it pretty much never happened. He was proud to say that he usually figured out his errors by the second try, or the customer would correct something he did wrong as he was doing it, giving him a chance to save the cup from being an entire loss. He was incredibly slow for a barista, but he didn't really care because they weren't making their major profits in coffee anyway, and also it was his business, so nobody could fire him for taking things slow so he could try to make sure he did them right.

The regulars were usually used to how James functioned, so they knew to either bring their own drink or accept whatever it was that James handed to them. If they were lucky, all he forgot to do was add extra flavoring to their drink, which was pretty easily fixable. On occasion, he forgot to add the actual coffee, but he was pretty sure there was so much sugar in there nobody would figure it out anyway.

(They did sell teas, but Paul had told him to stop committing crimes against nature and just hand the customer a cup of hot water and a tea bag and let them do the rest themselves. James was more than happy to do so.)

It wasn't the end of the world if he got the type of milk wrong, or if he put a little too much coffee or not enough syrup. Nobody came in special to drink his coffee anyway.

Well.

They didn't used to, anyway.

~~~

Dick had started coming in about a month ago. That was actually his name, or at least a commonly accepted abbreviation of his name among men of a certain age, so James didn't feel bad for referring to him as such, even if he  _had_  introduced himself as Rich.

At first, James had actually thought Dick was pretty hot. In his defense, when he came in the door he was wearing board shorts and James was crouched on the floor in front of the counter trying to clean up a streak of latte that had somehow gone projectile, and so when James looked up to greet his new customer, he got an eyeful of some of the thickest thighs he had ever seen in his life – and James used to live and breathe hockey, so he had seen his fair share of amazingly ridiculous thighs.

"Enjoying the view?" the thighs had asked. It had taken James's brain a moment to piece together that he had to actually keep looking upwards so that he could see the guy's face, and that was a struggle on its own because there were just so many things to stop and consider – his waist, his shoulders, tattooed arms that looked like they could bench press the entire pastry case and James with it. The face wasn't half-bad either, even if the way it was smirking down at James made his face start to flush from more than the heat of the machinery.

"Uhhh...no?"

That sounded like a safe way to not tell his customer that he wanted to know if his abs were as lickable as the rest of him.

The guy quirked an eyebrow in surprise, but his face lit up like James's response was an unexpected delight.

"So you just like hanging out down there, then?"

"It's about as enjoyable as standing up," James had said, because his verbal filter had taken its leave of him. He levered himself off of the floor all the same.

For a moment he reached out to shake the guy's hand, before remembering that he was not only holding a wad of dirty paper towels, but also that it was really fucking weird for him to offer to shake a customer's hand. He let his hand fall back to his side and said, "Uh, one moment please."

He walked around the back of the counter, never once taking his eyes off of the guy, and stepped backwards through the door to the kitchen so that he never had to break eye contact.

"What are you doing?" Paul asked, even though when James actually turned to look at him, he was up to his elbows in flour and wasn't even facing James's direction.

"Paulie!" he hissed, "Paulie, there's a super hot guy out there!"

"Be still my beating heart."

"It's okay, though," James said as he washed his hands, "Don't worry, Paulie. I have it under control."

"As long as we have you to save us from all of the handsome men."

"Exactly. Okay. I'm going to deal with this, Paulie. I'm gonna do it. I'll see you on the other side."

"I'll remember you fondly!" Paul was calling out as James hyped himself up and burst back through the door and into the front of the shop.

The guy was still there – it wasn't until that moment that James had considered that he might have left – leaning against the counter while looking at something on his phone.

When James came back out he looked up and smirked again, pocketing the phone.

"What can I get you?" James put on his best smile, the one that all of the old ladies said made him look charming.

"Can I get an iced capp?"

James paused.

"Uh, no. Sorry. We don't serve those because...well, we don't serve them. The closest I can get you is a normal cappuccino and a cup of ice and you have to combine them yourself."

The guy blinked and made a face, like he thought James was teasing him and he wanted in on the joke.

"You've got to be fucking with me."

James pointed at the sign on the wall behind him, listing off the drinks that they would not make, including steeped teas, anything with "frap" in the name, anything that might be considered an "infusion," anything that expected James to pour something over, under, or around something else, and anything including ice.

They had ice, and they had coffee, but it always inevitably came out being something watery and sad and at a temperature at which only James liked to keep his drinks. It was better just to discourage people from asking for it at this point.

"Okay," the guy said slowly, squinting first at the sign and then up at their chalkboard menu. "Then can I get...a medium mocha latte?"

James consulted the cheat sheet behind the counter.

"Yes. I can do that. Yeah."

He was squinting at the register, cursing himself for forgetting to put in his contacts this morning while his glasses were having new lenses put in, when the guy said, "So just how long does it take you to get your hair like that?"

"Huh?"

James flicked a glance up at the guy and then back down at the register, consulting the price listing to make sure he didn't get anything wrong.

"Your hair. It looks like you must put a lot of time and work into getting it that way."

This time when James looked up, their gazes caught and held. He could feel himself starting to turn red again, because the guy was hot, and his smile was only making things worse, and James wasn't maybe the best at flirting, but he was pretty certain that this guy was coming on to him.

And, quite honestly, James could appreciate anyone who appreciated his hair. He would go as far as to call it his best attribute. Paul had his baking, James had his hair. They were all blessed in one way or another.

"Really? Thanks, a lot of people don't realize how hard-"

"I'd keep working on it."

James froze up, his mouth hanging open.

The guy smiled and winked at him.

James's eye twitched.

The man swiped his credit card without waiting for James to read him his total.

"The name for the cup is Rich, by the way. Clune."

"Right, got it."

They didn't normally write names on cups – or ever, really – but that didn't stop James from turning around, slamming his way through the kitchen door past a concerned Paulie and into his office, where he rummaged around in the drawers until he could find a sharpie marker, after which he reversed the process, complete with increasingly concerned Paulie, and stomped back up to the counter. With an excess of flourish and great relish he snatched up a paper cup, scribbled a name on it, and said through his best gritted-teeth customer service smile, "I'll get right on that for you."

He didn't intentionally fuck it up, but if he swapped chocolate for hazelnut and used straight up regular coffee in place of espresso, at least he resisted just dumping some cold-ass regular milk from the fridge in it and calling it a fucking day.

"Your drink."

He slammed the cup down on the counter firmly enough that half its contents would have gone the way of the earlier projectile latte had the lid not been on firmly.

The customer picked up his cup and took a sip right there at the counter. James wasn't even sure at that point what he'd gotten wrong, but he was almost looking forward to seeing the man's face when he tasted whatever evil James had brewed up.

The man made a face like he'd been kicked in the stomach, wincing and rearing back to stare at the cup like it might be able to explain to him what had gone so horribly wrong. When he caught sight of the name on the side of the cup he nearly choked, coughs giving way to hoarse chuckles. He didn't complain about the drink or the name, didn't even remark on it. He simply held up the cup in salute, making sure that James could read his own writing, turned around, and left.

And thus, a Dick was born.

~~~

"Are you okay?" Paul had asked a minute later, once the coast was clear. He tried to avoid being in the storefront while customers were there, mostly because some of them got a little too interested in the whole reclusive Minnesotan master baker shtick he had going on – which, interestingly enough, made Paulie become even more reclusive to avoid having to deal with them.

James was slumped on the counter, his cheek pressed against the mostly cool laminate.

"It sucks, Paulie," he mumbled. "He's so hot, but he's such a dick that it's, like, in his name."

He didn't have to look to know that those were Paulie's frowning grumbles.

"What did he do?"

"He said I needed to work on my hair."

The only people who were allowed to joke about James's hair were blood relatives and Paulie, because he knew they were just teasing. It used to be the team to, but – well. He didn't have as many things going for him now as he used to, and he was proud of the good features he did have, his hair especially.

"What a dick," Paul agreed heartily, patting James's shoulder.

At least Paulie always had his back.

~~~

James had honestly thought that would be the last of it – the guy hadn't ordered any sort of baked good to keep him coming back, and surveys said that James's coffee on its own had the ability to actually drive people away from the shop. There was no reason for him to come back, especially after their altercation the last time.

But there Dick was, waltzing in during the afternoon lull, right as James was performing first aid on himself at the front counter.

"We're closed," he said without bothering to look up.

"No we're not!" Paul shouted from the back. The man wouldn't hear James dying on the floor screaming for help, but he had enhanced hearing when it came to James driving away customers.

"The cashier is currently down a functional hand and will continue to be so until he can wrap it up, so unless you want to come out here yourself, we are closed until I feel like not being closed anymore!"

Silence.

Nothing like threatening to make Paulie deal with the customers for James to get his way.

"Sorry about that, we really are closed," he started to say, only to look up and see-

"Oh. It's you. Yeah, we're super closed."

Dick did that stupid thing with his eyebrow again, like he was surprised by what James said but also thought it was funny.

James scowled. Nothing about any of this was funny.

He ignored Dick watching him as he gingerly peeled back the towel he'd been using to pat his hand dry after running it under cool water in the kitchen for a few minutes. He was sadly old hat at treating steam burns by now, but they never stopped hurting like a bitch. This one wasn't bad, it wasn't going to blister or anything, but it wasn't going to be fun waiting for it to heal.

Using his teeth he ripped open the thin packaging on a gauze pad, making quick work of applying it to the back of his hand. When he was satisfied with his work and looked up again, Dick was still there, leaning against the counter and peering down at his hand.

When he noticed James watching him, he smiled.

"Does this mean you're ready to take my order?"

James barely resisted invoking Dick's nickname out loud and with a good deal of fervency, because he was a goddamn professional.

"What do you want, the Beastie Boys special again?"

He felt more than a little satisfied to think that if Dick had a drink right now he'd probably be choking on it.

"I'm sorry,  _what_?"

James blinked, unmoved.

"Mocha latte? 'I like my sugar with coffee and cream'?"

This time Dick really did laugh out loud, like it had been surprised out of him. His eyes sparkled when he laughed.

God, why did the pretty ones have to be such assholes?

"Usually there's a bit more coffee to it than when you make it," Dick said, still smiling.

"Yeah, well, if you wanted it done right you wouldn't come to me. Everyone knows that."

"Who's everyone? I didn't know that."

James might be a professional, but he had very loose definitions of the term.

He rolled his eyes.

"Anyone who's ever bought coffee from me? It's just kind of a known fact. People come here for the baking. 'Come for the baked goods, run from the coffee.' I'm pretty sure that's, like, all over our Yelp page."

Dick was still smiling. James kind of wanted to wipe it off his face.

Maybe using his own face. Or his fist. Whichever was easiest.

"I never read your Yelp page."

"Well, clearly, because you've been here twice now and you've ordered coffee but not a single pastry."

"I'm kind of on a strict diet plan."

James took a moment to consult his cheat sheet for mocha lattes, making sure to tip the paper so that Dick could see what he was reading.

"Mocha lattes, yeah, that sure looks like a diet food to me. It's right up there with kale chips and drinking bourbon before breakfast."

The smile never changed, but James suddenly got the feeling that it was more like a baring of fangs, sharp and dangerous.

It was the eyes, he realized. He wasn't smiling with his eyes anymore.

"I always preferred whiskey for my eye opener, personally," Dick said.

James tried not to wince. It felt like the wrong answer, even if he didn't have the right one.

"Well, shit, mocha latte it is, then," he muttered to the counter.

He almost flinched when Dick laughed, except it was audibly brighter by degrees than his smile from mere moments ago. James really did jump when Dick's hand landed on his shoulder, squeezing briefly before letting go, a touch so fleeting he wondered if he'd made it up.

"I try to get up without any substances anymore, including caffeine," Dick said. "I keep my coffee as an afternoon treat. A mocha latte is just more of a treat than usual."

"Cheat day?" James eyed him warily.

Dick shrugged. "Eh, it's summer. More like a cheat season, if you do it in moderation."

James nodded like that made any lick of sense. It was a skill he'd learned early on in customer service.

"Okay, so what  _can_  I get for you, then, if you're supposedly looking for something that you can pretend is healthy?"

Dick looked surprised, like maybe he hadn't considered what he would buy before coming in. Which was ten types of stupid, because if he really wasn't out for baked goods, there were easily five coffee shops in the area with coffee that was far superior to theirs. James kept photocopies of a hand-drawn map of the area labeling them all behind the counter for the occasional lost traveler who stumbled in legitimately expecting to get good coffee out of him.

"Uh, I guess I'll just get a regular coffee. Medium, dark roast, two creams, one sugar. Please."

This time he paid with a ten dollar bill; when James tried to give him his change, he insisted that James keep it as a tip.

"They don't even have a tip jar out for you guys," he said, "So you should hold on to it."

"Nobody's ever tried to tip me before, so nobody thought we needed one," James drawled. He didn't bother explaining that he was both the entirety of "they" and of "you guys."

He kept the money anyway.

"Medium, dark roast, two creams, one sugar."

Dick reached out a hand to take the cup from him.

James sat it on the counter and slid it over to him.

For some reason that made Dick laugh. Maybe he just really liked seeing James write the wrong name on his cup.

This time when Dick took a sip, he said, "Well, it's not horrible, but I think you swapped the number of creams and sugars."

James shrugged, the most effort he could put into pretending to care at this point.

"It's sugar with coffee and cream, man. I don't know what more you want from me."

Dick laughed again like he thought James was just the funniest person he'd ever met. He did that dumb salute with his cup again before he left.

Just as he was opening the door he called out without turning around, "Sure Shot is better!"

"What? Fuck you, no it's not!" James spluttered. But by that time the door was already swinging shut, taking Dick and his strange laughter with him.

"James! Stop cursing out the customers to their faces!" Paul shouted from the kitchen.

"It was to his back, Paulie, it barely counts!"

~~~

For some reason, Dick just kept coming in after that. He'd been in at least twice a week for the past month. There didn't seem to be a schedule to it, no real rhyme or reason, though true to his word it was always during the afternoon lull. He never ordered food, but he'd tried half of James's drink repertoire, which was a kind way of saying he'd watched James attempt and fail his way through half of the drinks on the written menu.

"What, no foam art?" he asked when James slid him the world's most pathetic latte.

"I was always told not to play with my food, sir."

Dick snorted, living up to his name. He leaned over and frowned down at the mug.

"What would you even call this shape?"

"'Yay I got most of the milk in the mug and didn't burn myself again'?"

"How's that been, anyway?"

Dick nodded at James's forearm, which was currently wrapped in a thick layer of gauze. That one had been, for once, not entirely James's fault, and not even related to coffee.

A few days ago he had been loitering in the kitchen waiting for the opportunity to steal one of Paul's freshly baked chocolate chip cookies (an oldie but a goodie), when Paul had tweaked his ankle the wrong way as he pulled the tray from the oven. It was his bad ankle, the one from the accident, and Paul went down like a sack of potatoes. James had lunged to catch him, and in the process Paul had dropped the hot baking sheet on James's arm, leaving an angry red welt in its wake.

He'd had to go to an urgent care clinic, where they wrapped his gross blistered arm up in gauze, gave him some painkillers, and told him to take the next day off so he could keep his arm elevated to hopefully reduce any swelling. Paul had been ready to close the entire shop for the day so that he could play the guilty nursemaid. While James was a glutton for attention (especially the kind that usually came with pastries), he wasn't about to let Paul keep blaming himself for something he couldn't help.

So the shop stayed open, with a sign on the counter saying that they weren't serving coffee today, and Paul ran from the back to help any customer who came in, glaring murder at James if he looked like he was even considering getting up from the table where he'd been camped out with his arm propped up.

Of course Dick had walked in, frowned at the sign on the counter, turned and taken stock of James, who was poking miserably at his phone in the corner, and decided that it was his God-given duty to harass James for the next hour like that would somehow make him feel better.

It was sort of nice, that he cared what had happened to James. He didn't know the full story – James didn't believe that anyone needed to know anything more than that there had been an accident in the kitchen – but it was almost like Dick was concerned for him. That was surprising, seeing as Dick was, well. A Dick.

Except sometimes, James didn't really feel like he minded Dick's presence. It sort of became their thing, chirping each other mercilessly over shitty coffee, or rather, James's shitty coffee-making abilities. It was nice, to have that sort of rapport with a customer.

James's only real friend in Nashville was Paul, and Paulie was hands-down his best friend in the entire world, but they probably spent more time together than was healthy. They couldn't really help it – they both lived above the shop, James on the top floor of the three-story building and Paul just below him. They were in each other's pockets all day, keeping everything running. Paul was up at the ass-crack of dawn to start on the day's baking, and some time around seven or eight James would drag himself downstairs to steal some muffins and open the front of the store. They would spend all day together, and after they closed up shop they would go upstairs back to Paulie's and eat dinner together and bitch about work and then they would go to bed and get up in the morning to repeat it all. James loved Paulie more than anyone except for maybe his mom, but he also went entire days where Paulie was the only non-customer he spoke to, and that was probably an issue he should address.

Dick was still a customer, in a technical sense, but he'd probably stopped being  _just_  a customer around the time he'd started laughing when James swore at him and brought in his own mug that said "DICKY" on the side in big block letters.

"You kept forgetting the 'y,'" he'd said, and James had felt a rush of  _something_  that he didn't know how to even begin to unpack.

He'd swallowed against it and replied, "No, I think I got it right."

Dick had smirked the way he always did, sharp and catlike and a little smug, his eyes intent on James as always.

His eyes were that intent right now as he asked about James's arm, like it really mattered to him how the crappy barista was doing.

"It's okay," James mumbled, shrugging and looking down at the bandage. "The swelling is down, and the blisters are mostly gone. Now everything's just all tight and sort of cracking and oozing. Paul said it's one of the most disgusting things he's ever seen, and he saw what I looked like before surgery."

Dick's expression flickered. "You had to have surgery?"

"Oh, uh, no. Well, yes, but a long time ago, not for..." He waved his wrapped arm in the air. "This."

Dick's eyes narrowed, leaning in, scrutinizing him, and then he stood upright and nodded to himself.

"Let me guess: you had a full face transplant because you're in witness protection, and that's why you abandoned Canada for Tennessee."

James didn't actually sigh in relief, but he couldn't help noticing the tension leaking out of him, his shoulders slumping back down. For as much as Dick could be, well, a Dick, he never seemed to have a problem reading James. Actually, James had never really struggled to read him either. They just...clicked.

God, he had to get out of the shop more.

"No, I'm just naturally this beautiful. No amount of money can buy a face like this."

"You better be careful with that face," Dick warned, "It's probably the only thing bringing in your customers, because it's certainly not the coffee."

James scoffed. "Everybody knows it's not the coffee. People come for Paulie's baking. My beautiful presence is just an added bonus feature to enhance the experience. Speaking of coffee, what would you like me to ruin for you today? Unless you'd actually like to give in and try one of Paulie's muffins. We still have some fresh Dutch chocolate from this morning, those almost never make it to the afternoon."

"No muffins," Dick said, "But a regular mocha today. I'm feeling like having some calories."

"You feel like having calories every time you come in," James mumbled, rolling his eyes as he found Dick's personal mug in the hodge-podge that had been collected in the cabinet under the counter. That was a change too; once Dick brought the mug, he almost never took his coffee to go. "Don't front, I've seen the sugar that goes into those drinks."

"Why James," Dick said, pressing a hand over his chest. His white t-shirt was thin and a little too tight across the chest and shoulders, leaving absolutely nothing up to the imagination. Not that James didn't do plenty of imagining anyway. "Are you fearful for my health?"

"It would look pretty bad if you fell into a diabetic coma right in front of me, yes."

"Right, I'll just save all of my health emergencies for once I leave here."

"Thank you, that's all I ask. The public sidewalk is fine."

Their eyes met as James started to steam the milk, and James could feel his lips curling into a small, involuntary smile. Dick was smirking again, but there was something a little soft around the edges of it, worn and familiar, like-

"Watch out!"

James looked down at the cup and nearly dropped it, fumbling the steam wand out of the pitcher before the milk could froth over the top of it. He squinted down at the bubbles just barely clinging to the edge of the pitcher.

"I mean, it's probably fine, right?"

Dick just started laughing, a full-body laugh with his hands pressed to his stomach like it hurt to laugh that hard, and James, who despised being the butt of a joke, couldn't help but find himself smiling along.

~~~

"Just admit you have a crush on him," Paul said over dinner that night, popping an overly tidy forkful of spaghetti into his mouth.

James, who had never eaten tidily in his life, started choking, spaghetti hanging out of his mouth as he hacked.

Paul was unmoved, thumping his back with a bland expression. "Are you going to react this way every time somebody tells you the truth?"

"Wh-why would you even say that? God, Paulie, of course I don't have a crush on Dick, he's a Dick! I just talk about him all the time because he's, like, the only person I regularly see besides you and that realtor who keeps buying pastries for all of her open houses."

"Linda's one of our best customers, you really should know her name by now," Paul said idly. He looked entirely unaffected by James's distress. They probably really were spending way too much time together.

"That's beside the point, Paulie! The  _point_  is that it's ridiculous to think I would ever have a crush on Dick, because he's a Dick and also because we don't even know if he likes me like that!"

Paul, entirely too used to following James's ramblings and leaps of logic, just raised a single ginger eyebrow.

"The man comes in here multiple times a week and has never once ordered anything aside from your shitty coffee, which he openly agrees he thinks is shitty. He started taking all of his coffee for here, so that he could talk to you more. He brought in his own dumb personalized mug and you're letting him  _keep it here_."

"That's not weird," James mumbled, staring down at his plate and feeling his face get as red as the sauce on his pasta. "It's just – economical. Because then I didn't have to order more mugs."

"We have mugs," Paul said dryly. "In fact, we probably have hordes of mugs that have never once been used because nobody ever orders your coffee to stay."

"Okay, well, whatever, what does it hurt to let him keep his own mug here?"

Paul shrugged. "It doesn't. I just want you to admit that you've both been flirting like idiots so that you can finally either tell him you're interested or cut the poor guy loose and put him out of his misery. That's a lot of money he's been spending on a lot of horribly prepared coffee."

James started to scoff almost on reflex, partially because it was how he responded to most things that Paul said to him, and partially because he couldn't help feeling defensive under scrutiny. He stopped himself short, though.

Quietly, he asked, "Do you really think he's interested in me? Like, not as a joke because Dick's a Dick, but like he really means it?"

Paul rolled his eyes and leaned over to ruffle James's hair.

"Nealer, your coffee is a crime against humanity but he still comes back for more. Yes, he like-likes you."

James squawked in protest and shoved Paul's hands away from his hair, only to protest more as Paul snuck a meatball off of his plate while he was trying to fix his hair.

Later that evening, as he was getting ready for bed, he looked at himself in the mirror and nodded.

The next time Dick came in, James would ask him out.

After all, the worst thing he could do was laugh and say no and make fun of James and never come back again, right?

But Dick wasn't alone the next time he came in.

~~~

James's ribs had creaked when he woke up, aching the way they sometimes still did when he slept weird or if he wasn't careful at the gym, and he knew it wasn't going to be a great day.

It had already been a busy morning, starting with James having to run out early and drop off a huge special order tiered cake with matching cupcakes because they paid extra to have James bring it to them the morning of their party instead of the night before when he usually made deliveries, "because otherwise we'll be too tempted to start eating it all, haha!"

His ribs were still complaining after hauling around the boxes, because it was that sort of day, so he popped a few ibuprofen and was back to the shop by 7:30, just in time to have someone berate him because there wasn't enough foam on her latte (frankly, she should have just been happy that there was  _any_  foam, but James bit his tongue and didn't tell her that).

He was helping Paulie out in the back during a lull and fumbled a blueberry pie as he pulled it out of the oven and ended up dropping it on top of another pie, ruining both. Paul had given him a small, sympathetic smile and gently steered James away from the oven so that he could clean up the mess, asking him if he wanted to go draw smiley faces on a few trays of whale-shaped cookies that Paul had just finished frosting for an order. James was good at drawing smiley faces.

By the time that Dick strolled in, it was shortly after noon, his chest ached if he tried to bend over to grab something, and James was sitting on a stool behind the front counter, eating one of the whale cookies that Paulie had given him as a thank you for his efforts. It was a little lopsided, so they couldn't sell it, but it still tasted good.

Also, it was smiling, and that made James smile. He liked happy whales.

There were a couple of guys with Dick, piling in the door behind him like they all had to get through first, big guys wearing every variation of salmon clothing that one could imagine, from tank tops to polos to shorts. Maybe they weren't as jacked as Dick (James may have been a little biased after having spent so much time paying particular attention to Dick's, ahem,  _physique_ ), but they were still the type of fit that took a lot of concerted effort, and required a distinct lack of pastries, and nobody wore that much salmon without being at least a little bit of a dick.

So. These must be Dick's gym friends.

Two of them immediately beelined for the display case, nudging each other and pointing at just about everything in it with a look of excitement that had James quickly reevaluating his earlier assessment. Another one was prodding at one of the example special order cakes that permanently lived on the corner of the counter, one with delicate green lacework over top of white fondant on a cake that James knew for a fact was at least two years old.

Shit, he should probably dust that.

There was still one guy hanging back with Dick, smirking and elbowing him playfully as he muttered something James couldn't hear over the chattering of the two by the display case. He glanced over at James, smirked in satisfaction, and leaned in close to Dick to say something that had Dick rolling his eyes and shoving him away.

James slid off his stool, put on his best customer service face, the vacant-eyed one with the smile that made his cheeks hurt, and asked the two guys at the counter if he could get them anything.

They blinked owlishly, like they hadn't noticed him there. Then they started tripping over themselves trying to order half of the case in halting, accented English.

"Is that for here or to go?" James asked blandly, just to see them stutter and flush at the suggestion that they were planning on eating a week's worth of calories in one sitting.

"To go," one of them finally said, after glancing at the other one for confirmation. "But I would like to get a medium cappuccino as well."

"No you wouldn't," James said easily, unfolding a few boxes and layering them with wax paper.

He didn't have to look up from packing the boxes to know the guy was frowning.

"Um, yes?" He genuinely asked it as a question.

James smirked down at the shortbread cookies as he placed them in a box.

"Nah, man, don't do that to yourself. Nobody comes here for the coffee, didn't Dick tell you?"

No less than three people made disgusting choking noises, like they'd only just barely kept from laughing out loud. The fourth was one of the European kids, who looked at his friends like he'd missed a joke and wasn't too happy about it.

Dick wasn't laughing. Actually, he looked a little...James didn't really know what to call that. Was that what chagrin was? He was smiling a little, looking self-conscious for the first time since James had met (and started insulting) him, and he rubbed the back of his neck like he was actually embarrassed.

Huh. Humility was a good look on him.

Then again, just about anything was a good look on him. He even made joining the salmon shorts brigade look good.

"No,  _Dick_  didn't tell us about the coffee," the guy who'd been standing next to Dick said. He waggled his eyebrows at Dick, who fell back to his regular form and punched him none-too-gently in the shoulder.

"He knows what my name is," he said, gesturing an arm at James.

James nodded and reached under the counter, wincing when his ribs reminded him they existed and didn't like him. He placed Dick's mug on top of the display case, making sure the name was facing outwards.

"I'm sorry, I always forget, it's technically Dicky."

Now both of the Europeans were laughing, along with the blond guy who'd been eyeing the cake displays.

Dick didn't even look bothered by that one, shrugging as his mouth twitched with the hint of another smile. But the guy next to Dick had an expression of unholy glee.

"But if Dicky agrees that we shouldn't get coffee here, why does he have his own mug?"

James taped up the box of assorted cookies and glanced over the top of the case at Dick, raising an eyebrow in challenge. Dick shrugged, but didn't say anything, uncharacteristically quiet, and so James said, "He brought his own. And he knows better than to buy the coffee, he just keeps doing it anyways. You're his friends, right? You should talk to him about his masochistic tendencies."

Both of the Europeans were mouthing the words to themselves, trying to puzzle them out. The one with the longer hair gave up earlier, in favor of watching with hungry eyes as James placed a pair of red velvet muffins into a new box.

The other two, however, were both watching Dick with interest, waiting for his response with far too much amusement. Dick didn't even spare them a glance as he strolled up to the counter, leaned against the display case like he didn't know that James would have to come wipe it down later, and said, "Now c'mon, James, you know practice makes perfect. If I keep ordering coffee, one of these days you'll get it right on the first try."

He looked so fantastically smug and pleased with himself. James could feel some unknown tension release, finally able to relax back into their usual roles. Dick was, of course, playing the part of the asshole, as was his wont when he wanted to try out being other parts of anatomy. But at this point the teasing had long since entered the realm of what anyone else would call flirting, if they weren't as inept as James and Dick.

The thing about that flirting was that it was a lot less awkward without an audience of well-toned conventionally attractive strangers who all seemed to actually know Dick on a personal level instead of making him shitty coffee once or twice a week while trading insults.

James was still trying to think up a reply that was suitably sarcastic but appropriate enough that he could say it in front of non-Dick customers without Paul having his head for making the company look bad when the guy who'd been needling Dick earlier came up to the counter alongside him.

"So you're James."

James took a moment to look down at his name tag with exaggerated care before he nodded. "Yeah, looks like."

He finished filling a third box with danishes and what were left of the pecan tarts, and then set about the monstrous task of ringing up the total for the Europeans.

The man smirked, entertained more than irritated by his response. "We keep telling  _Dick_  that he should invite you out with us sometime. He's only been talking about you all summer."

James tried not to look up too suddenly, not wanting to look too desperate, but he probably failed miserably seeing as his head turned fast enough that his glasses almost fell off. Dick was watching him a little too closely as he pushed them back up his nose.

"You have," James said, purposely trying not to make it a question. He already sounded too interested to be casual, he didn't need to make things worse.

"I might have mentioned I come here sometimes," Dick said. He crossed his arms, still leaning into the display case. When James finally dragged his eyes away from the tattoos on his biceps back to his face, Dick was smirking at him.

James ducked his head, absolutely refusing to be flustered. He squinted at the total on the register even with his glasses on and ignored Dick in favor of frowning at the Europeans.

"The total is over two hundred dollars. In pastries that won't be good for much more than a week unless you freeze them. Are you guys sure you want to spend that kind of money?"

They looked a bit like college students on a study abroad program, and James knew he didn't have that kind of money to blow on baked goods when he was in college, no matter how badly he wanted to. Then again, he and Paul had both been on the kind of diet plan back then that made desserts few and far between.

He had to hit the gym a lot more now than he did when he was still playing to work off the effects of spending every day in a bakery. His abs still weren't what they used to be. He mourned for them, sometimes.

One of the European kids nodded, entirely unperturbed. "We're having a party for everyone coming back to town."

James wasn't quite sure what they meant, but he didn't really care that much. Besides, the kid's credit card was good – platinum ones usually were – so what he chose to do with it was up to him.

"Oh, but the coffee?" the other kid said, as if he'd forgotten.

"You don't want it," James said. He frowned when he realized that Dick had said the exact same thing at the same time.

"Hey, only I get to insult my own work."

Dick smirked and nodded at the plaque on the wall behind James, proclaiming him the All-Time Worst Employee.

"And did you make that yourself?"

James rolled his eyes and bagged up the multiple boxes of pastries, slipping the receipt in the bag.

"No, Paulie made that because Minnesota Nice is a lie. I'll have you know I'm also Employee of the Month, every month, for forever."

"Your boss sounds confused," the guy next to Dick laughed. James frowned, having completely forgotten he was there.

"My boss recognizes my positive attributes," he said primly.

"He's not the only one," the blond guy muttered. There was a line drawn in the dust-covered fondant he'd been admiring on the display cake, even though he was steadfastly pretending that he'd never been anywhere near it.

It was suitable that Dick surrounded himself with dicks and liars.

James took a deep breath, regretted it almost instantly, and slapped back on his customer service face.

"Can I get you guys anything else?"

The guy next to Dick elbowed him again, hard enough that he almost lost his balance on the display case.

When Dick only glared at him, the guy gave James a huge, cheesy smile.

" _Dicky_  would like your number," he said.

James blinked.

"It's on the bag. And the boxes. Actually he has to have at least one of our business cards by now too. Plus we're on social media, and we have a website-"

"He meant  _your_  number," Dick grumbled. He wasn't looking at James, still glaring at the guy next to him. But then he turned and his face softened just a little, like for the first time since James had met him, he actually cared about what James might say.

"He meant that I'd like your personal number."

James was suddenly keenly aware that not only was Dick staring at him with that soft, hopeful look, without any of his usual obnoxious confidence, but that they were also surrounded by four of his buddies James had never met before, and they were all watching James like he was part of their favorite soap opera, waiting to see his response. And James was red, so red, and even though his hair was covering how much his ears stuck out he knew they were red too, and this was not at all how he'd practiced trying to ask Dick on a date when he'd gone over it with Paulie.

He didn't imagine telling Dick how he felt while being watched by two European kids who'd already broken into their box of danishes.

"Uhhh..."

Everyone was staring at him. He knew what he wanted to do – his endgame was to give Dick his number, because James wanted to go on a date with him and clearly Dick really was interested – but he didn't know if he wanted to do it like this, surrounded by all of Dick's bros, when James kind of felt like garbage and nothing in his day was going as he'd planned.

"Nealer, did you remember to order cranberries, because I can't find them in the cooler- oh."

Paulie, James's saving grace, pushed through the door to the back with a towel thrown over his shoulder and an apron covered in flour. He frowned when he saw the cluster of people in front of the counter, particularly when he noticed Dick there.

"You need help with anything?" Paul brushed his arm up against James's as he pushed his glasses up his nose with flour-dusted fingers. He could have been speaking to James or to their customers, but it was James who shrugged.

"No, we're all good. Unless you guys wanted to order something else?"

One of the European kids dropped a piece of his danish. James handed him a napkin with a bland smile.

"Uh, I think we're good," the blond guy said, glancing between Dick and James. Dick wasn't looking at James anymore, kind of grimacing while the guy next to him clapped a hand on his shoulder.

James felt kind of bad, and he knew he'd be cursing himself later, but...

"Okay, have a good day!" he said, hoping he could somehow shoo them all out the door with his smile.

Dick turned around and left without a word, the guy next to him trailing after looking upset. The blond guy at least gave them a short smile and a nod. One of the Europeans actually waved.

Once they had all gone far enough down the street that James couldn't see them through the window anymore, he groaned and slumped onto his stool, which was at just the right height for him lean forward to rest his forehead on the counter.

"Don't do that, you're going to fuck up your ribs again with your bad posture." Paul poked him in the shoulder. It actually kind of hurt, because Paul was awful, but he didn't poke James in the ribs, because he was also James's best friend.

He slowly dragged himself upright and gave Paul his most pathetic expression.

"I already fucked up, Paulie."

Paul nodded.

"You usually do, but tell me what specifically happened this time."

"He asked for my phone number, and I just, I fucking froze, man! I mean, first his friend asked him for me, which is kinda corny, you know? Like that's fun, his friends asking you out because he won't. But I think they were probably just trying to embarrass him because shocker, his friends are dicks too. But he sat there waiting giving me these, like, fucking puppy eyes or something, and I fucking froze!"

"What did you say?"

"I didn't say anything! I literally stared at him with my mouth open until you came out, and then I just, like, customer service'd them out the door."

"Why do you have to be so good at customer service?" Paul tsked, shaking his head sadly.

"I  _know_!" James groaned, slumping against the counter again and dropping his head into his hands. "I swear to God, I'm my own fuckin' worst enemy. Now he probably thinks I don't like him or something, but he's like, stupid hot, and I like his stupid face and his stupid tattoos and his stupid  _thighs_  and all the stupid shit that comes out of his mouth, but..."

"But?"

"But he brought all of his stupid friends and I got nervous, man! I'm trying to like, be charming and shit, and there's this European kid standing right in front of me eating a cherry danish with his fucking mouth open! How the fuck am I supposed to make important romantic decisions at a moment like that?"

Paulie made a sad sound. "He ate it with his mouth open?"

"With his fucking mouth open, Paulie, like a fucking animal. And I just, I went blank, I didn't know what to say. He just ambushed me, and I had all this shit I was going to say, you know I was going to be like  _so suave_  and shit, and then he brought his friends and I just couldn't do it. They were all staring at me!"

"It was a shitty move to bring friends, that makes it weird."

" _Exactly_ , it was weird. And now he's gone and he's going to think I don't like him, which is so dumb because clearly I do, I'm not good at hiding my emotions-"

"You're not," Paul agreed.

"And now he's never going to come back because I fucked everything up."

Paul snorted and leaned against the closed door of the display case, crossing his flour-covered arms over his chest.

"I don't think that's exactly true."

"What, you think he's going to come back because he just loves the coffee so much?" James scoffed.

He jumped when Paul plunked Dick's mug down in front of his face.

"No, but he did leave his mug here. Chin up, Nealer. He likes you. He'll lick his wounds for a bit, and then he'll be back."

Paul rubbed a floury hand over James's hair, making him squawk in protest and bat his hand away.

"Now where the hell did you put my cranberries?"

~~~

But Dick didn't come back.

He didn't come back the next week, as August ticked into September and all of the sudden people came in expecting James to put pumpkin spice in everything, like it wasn't still a million degrees outside and sunny.

He didn't come back the week after that, when James slipped on the puddle he himself had made while mopping and accidentally ripped his own Worst Employee plaque off the wall trying to catch himself, leaving a gouge in the wall where the nail holding it up used to be.

Three weeks later they were coming up on the official beginning of fall and Dick still hadn't shown his face once.

"I think I really fucked things up, Paulie," James said softly one night, huddled up on Paul's couch and pretending to be half as invested in the Minnesota Vikings game as Paul.

Paulie frowned, still never looking away from the tv. "Sure, you put too many blueberries in those scones, but I'm not sure I would call that 'fucking up.' Some people actually really appreciated the extra berries."

"No, not that. The thing with Dick. The thing where I was super awkward and didn't give him my number and he never came back."

"Oh. Well." Paul leaned back against the couch and took a long sip of beer, looking pensive.

"As your friend, I feel that it's my job to tell you that you can do better than him and he never really deserved you anyway."

James made a face and kicked at him lightly. "How can you say that?"

"James," Paul said, face incredibly solemn. "He was a Dick."

"Oh my God I fucking hate you so much." James kicked at him again, but this time he was laughing hard enough that he didn't even try to stop Paul from shoving him completely off the couch.

It didn't exactly make things better, but James lived on. It just...wasn't meant to be. Things like that happened. Shit, James and Paul knew all about wanting something so badly you dedicated your whole life to it, only for all of your dreams to fall apart in a screeching crunch of metal. Never getting to go out with the guy you had a crush on...well, it sucked, but life went on, and so James had to do the same.

It was a full month since Dick and his friends came into Herb's Electronics when a familiar face appeared in the doorway, looking a little hesitant.

"Hey, man. You guys do special orders, right?" the blond guy asked, the same one who'd come in with Dick and drawn in the dust on the display cake.

Shit, James still hadn't cleaned that off.

"Uh, yeah, we do. What did you have in mind?"

The guy smiled and came up to the counter. "I need a cake for my girlfriend's birthday. I'll be out of town, and I know she was just planning something quiet with her friends, but I thought it'd be cool to surprise her with a cake – you can deliver, right?"

James nodded and grabbed the cake binder out from under the counter.

"Yeah, for a fee. If you have something particular in mind, I can bring Paulie out and see if he's able to do it, but otherwise, there are a bunch of photos in there of cakes he's made."

The guy smiled and took the binder from him. He was still flipping through it when another customer came in, and he stepped aside so she could get to the counter.

"Hi, could I get an orange cranberry scone and a small pumpkin spice latte?"

Ringing her up and handing over the scone was easy, but James and flavored drinks tended to fare even worse than James and regular drinks. He was frowning down at the milk, willing it to froth when he heard the woman saying, "I'm sorry, but you're Colin Wilson, aren't you?"

When he looked up, the blond guy was smiling at her and nodding.

Her face absolutely lit up and she was pulling out her phone. "I'm sorry, this is kind of embarrassing, but would you sign my phone case? You're one of my favorites and I just – oh my God, my friends are going to be so jealous I met you."

He took it well, still smiling as he said, "It's cool, we love meeting fans." He paused, patted at his pockets, and then looked over at James.

"I'm sorry, do you have a marker?"

James did, only because he'd started keeping one up there to write Dick's name on his to-go cups, back when Dick still frequented his establishment because he still liked James.

He didn't say any of that, just grabbed the marker out from under the till and handed it over. The woman looked absolutely thrilled to have the blond dude, Colin, apparently, write all over her phone case, and she looked like she just might explode when she asked James to take a picture of them together. In fact, she kept on smiling up until she took a sip of her drink and made a face like she was about to gag.

"Oh my God, I like pumpkin, but that's, uh, that's maybe a little too much."

James blinked.

"Uh...I can do it again?"

She nodded quickly and handed the drink back, and James sighed and set about making another one. From her expression when she tried it, it wasn't the best, but apparently it was acceptable, because she turned to leave, but not without smiling one last time and telling Colin, "Good luck this year!"

The door had just closed behind her when Colin turned back to James and said, "I mean no offense, man, really, but why are you still a barista when everybody says you're really bad at making coffee, including you?"

James stared at him. "I'm not a barista."

Colin made a point of looking at his coffee-stained apron and the coffee machines surrounding him and the fact that James was the only employee who ever made coffee.

"Oh. Well, I mean, I guess I technically am, but it's not my job. Or, well, everything here is my job except for the baking part. I'm one of the co-owners, and I don't bake, so that means I do the coffee and the everything else."

It made perfect sense to James, but Colin was frowning.

"Why don't you just hire someone to make your coffee then? You know, so people might come for the coffee instead of telling everyone to avoid it?"

James started to reply that they didn't have the money for that, except that he and Paul had come to that miserable conclusion two years ago when they were just starting out. Now, though...well, he'd have to take a look at the books, but that might actually be a plausible idea.

It wasn't really good form to be making major business decisions in front of new customers, though, so James instead asked Colin if he'd found a cake he liked yet.

"Oh, yeah." He pointed to a single-layer cake, deep purple with a black lace pattern around the sides and topped with large purple fondant flowers.

It was as James was writing up the order form that he said, "So I guess you're a well-known name around here, eh?"

Colin actually looked a little bashful, smiling down at the counter.

"Yeah, I, uh, I play for the Nashville Predators. It's a hockey team," he added, like James might not know who they were.

James did happen to know who they were. The one downside of escaping to Nashville to avoid any potential mention of hockey was that it did, in fact, have a professional hockey team. The only saving grace was that hockey in Nashville was not nearly so big a deal as it was in Pittsburgh when James and Paul were in school, and its hockey market had nothing on living in Minnesota or Ontario.

Nashville was practically silent on hockey, compared to the other places that they might have chosen to live. But it still had a hockey team, and so James still had to change the channel when local sports came on the news, or grimace when someone ordered cupcakes in Predators colors for their kid's birthday party. It wasn't so bad that way, just oblique references, just knowing that it existed. He didn't mind the general existence of hockey, as long as he didn't have to watch it or think about it or hang around with hockey players.

Except, evidently, Colin Wilson was a hockey player. He probably hung out with hockey players. In fact, if he was out with a bunch of guys talking about being home for the summer, and some of them were European, and all of them were jacked, and they had two hundred dollars to casually blow on pastries, then that probably meant...

"Oh. Were, uh, all of your buddies hockey players? The last time you were in here?"

Colin smiled like he knew exactly what James was asking.

"Yeah, those were all my teammates."

He didn't say what they were both thinking: that this meant that Dick was a professional hockey player.

Well, maybe it was a good thing that they never went on that date, because dating a hockey player really would have put a cramp in that whole "avoiding everything to do with hockey" lifestyle that James had been promoting the past few years.

"Oh. Cool."

Colin smiled again, but if he thought James was going to say something more on it, he was dead wrong. James was going to have whatever dumb freak-out his brain wanted to have later, in the privacy of his own Paulie's kitchen, thank you very much.

He waited until Colin's order was set and paid for and Colin was gone and out the door before he trudged back to the kitchen. He'd barely shoved his way through the door before he was moaning, "He's a hockey player, Paulie!"

Paul was calmly kneading some sort of dough that probably had to sit out overnight to rise and didn't even look up at James, as per usual. "Who?"

"Dick! He's a fucking hockey player!"

James pulled up the Nashville Predators roster, and there was only one Richard on the team so it didn't take long to figure out who he was. Fuck, but he'd introduced himself as Rich Clune, hadn't he? He probably thought James knew exactly who he was, seeing as he knew full well that James was Canadian and one would expect a good Ontario boy to know his local hockey players.

Clearly, James was not a good Ontario boy, but he'd given himself a free pass to stop living up to Don Cherry's ideals when the doctors said he'd never be able to play contact sports again.

Now Paul really was paying attention, crowding in over James's shoulder to read Dick's –  _Richard Clune's_  Wikipedia page with him.

"I mean, I guess he  _did_  say he was from Toronto. How many guys from the GTA are living in Nashville who  _aren't_  hockey players?"

James glared at him, unwilling to verbalize that he was in Nashville and clearly was no longer a hockey player.

Paulie was unmoved, rolling his eyes and going back to his dough.

"I mean, would it have really been so bad? Most people would love to date a professional hockey player."

"Yeah, but most people didn't once also have dreams of  _being_  a professional hockey player, only to..." He waved a hand in the air. Paul wasn't looking, but they both knew what James was talking about. Paulie had lived it too, after all.

"Well, I guess you don't have to worry about it anymore, if he still hasn't come back in."

Paul actually looked over at James, as if to check his answer.

James swallowed thickly and looked back down at his phone.

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess not."

"Hey, Nealer-"

"It's fine, I'm just gonna, like, check on the front. Probably shouldn't leave the register unattended and the front door unlocked. What shitty business owners we are."

He slipped out of the kitchen before Paul could say anything else.

~~~

Later that afternoon, after they'd closed up the front, James was looking over the books while Paulie prepped some of the morning's baking.

"Hey Paulie, what do you think about hiring a barista?"

"Does that mean you're finally throwing in the towel and admitting defeat?"

"Fuck you, I put a lot of damn effort into that coffee and you know it. But we both know that my coffee is crap, and maybe a few years ago we couldn't afford to hire another employee, but right now, not only could we afford to pay at least one if not two full-time employees, but if coffee sales take off, we might actually turn a profit, even accounting for their salaries. And then I could focus more on the behind the scenes stuff, and the both of us might not have to spend our every waking moment here."

Paul canted his head to the side in thought, and then shrugged. "If that's what you want to do, I'd say go for it."

The next day, for the first time ever, Herb's Electronics had a "Now Hiring" sign in its window. A week later, they'd made their first hire.

Evgeny Kuznetsov was a Russian university student who'd made the inexplicable decision to move to Nashville for his degree. When James asked him about it, he'd just shrugged and said something in Russian, knowing entirely well that James had no clue what he was saying. Actually, he had a tendency to handily forget English whenever he decided that he didn't feel like answering somebody, that somebody quite often being James, despite the fact that James had proofread one of his papers for him and knew for a fact that he had a more than competent grasp on the English language.

The customers, for an equally inexplicable reason, seemed to find this to be incredibly charming. It was that, or they were just in love with the way that he not only made all of their drinks correctly on the first try, but he also knew how to make foam art.

If they could just get him to stop drawing the Washington Capitals eagle in the foam, they would be golden.

When James had first tried to say "Evgeny," he'd received an expression like he'd just pissed on the kid's shrine to Ovechkin or something.

"Call me Kuzya," he'd said, and he'd handed James yet another latte with a Caps eagle on it.

"I don't drink coffee," James said, sitting the mug down.

Kuzya pushed it closer to him, giving him a meaningful look.

"I am so confused."

It was a work in progress, but Kuzya was better at making coffee than James, so at least it was a step in the right direction.

James didn't really know why they hired Carey, or rather, he didn't know why the hell Carey was applying for a job as a full-time barista working those glamorous 5am shifts where the bleary-eyed customers mostly grunted at you and shoved money in your direction until you plied them with pastries and, in Carey's case, caffeine. For one, Carey was way too smart for them. James didn't know what his degree was in, but he knew that Carey had one, and it took only one conversation with him to figure out that Carey could be making a lot more money doing a lot more interesting work pretty much anywhere else.

For another, it was kind of strange for a guy from British Columbia to decide, after spending years living in Montreal, that Nashville sounded like a good place to be. Then again, that was kind of what James and Paul did, and they didn't feel like reciting their own enigmatic back-story very often, so James didn't press him too much and let Carey have his secrets.

Where he came from didn't really matter, anyway. What mattered was that he came in already knowing how to make coffee and within two days he was running the front better than James ever had, with a sort of quiet competence that James sorely lacked when it came to making hot beverages. If he joined Kuzya in mocking James at every available opportunity, at least he was more subtle about it.

Having employees opened up a whole new world for James, a world where he had to do payroll taxes but no longer had to burn himself multiple times a week to fulfill the whims of customers who really just wanted an excuse to order a cupcake at nine in the morning.

For one, they actually really did start to turn a profit on their coffee sales. People started to come in  _just_  to buy coffee – and they did it more than once! None of them were Dick, to James's knowledge, but then again, Dick hadn't really been coming for the coffee, anyway.

Of course, Dick was a professional hockey player, so he shouldn't be frequenting a place like Herb's Electronics that much, anyway.

Speaking of hockey players, having employees meant that Paul didn't have to cover the front when James made a morning delivery to drop off Colin Wilson's cake order. His girlfriend was suitably surprised and delighted that he'd ordered her a cake, evidently because he was playing an away game – "the first road trip of the season," she told him – and they weren't able to spend the day together.

"This is beautiful!" she gasped, opening the box right there on her porch.

James told her he'd pass her praise on to the baker and wished her a happy birthday.

Business was going well for Herb's Electronics. It was a little weird, because now that they actually sold palatable coffee – James might actually say it was good coffee, but he still didn't drink it, so he had to take everyone else's word for it – people actually stuck around to drink it. College kids came with their laptops and set them up in the tables by the windows, next to the display cakes that James actually had to dust now because people were regularly sitting close enough to them to see the layer of grey. People met up with their friends for lunch. Customers were actually spending more time in the shop than it took to get their food and pay.

It was a novel experience. James had to rearrange the seating area to fit in more chairs. He had to call their internet provider to set up public wifi access. One day they actually ran out of clean mugs and had to start handing people to-go cups, except it was  _to stay_.

Well, they almost ran out of mugs. There was one mug under the counter that everyone had been strictly informed they were not to use, because, as James put it, "It doesn't actually belong to us, anyway."

"Yes, I always keep stranger mug in my house," Kuzya said with a solemn nod, because James's employees made it a sport to verbally eviscerate him on a regular basis. Kuzya's English always notably improved when he had the opportunity to insult James.

Paul thought it was hilarious. James threatened to hire him an assistant baker so he would know what it felt like (and so that they could open the front on weekends while still having the day off).

Maybe it was a little weird, keeping Dick's mug for him when he'd been gone for over two months. He was a hockey player, after all, and he had better things to do than come back looking for the dumb coffee mug he'd brought in to help him flirt with the guy who made shitty coffee at the bakery he didn't buy baked goods from. It was a summer thing, James told himself. Dick was probably bored without hockey, and now the season was going again and he had other things to do.

Well, that was fine. James had a booming business to tend to and didn't have time to worry about hockey players.

If he downloaded the NHL app, it was only so he could properly chirp Kuzya over the Capitals.

~~~

But apparently, despite his best efforts, the hockey world wasn't quite done with James. In early November, about a month after James had delivered her birthday cake, Colin Wilson's girlfriend came into the shop with a cadre of other intimidatingly attractive women and asked to speak with James.

She smiled when he came up to the front like he was a long-lost friend.

"Thank you so much again for my birthday cake!"

James blinked. "Uh, you're welcome, but I'm just the guy who dropped it off. If you want to speak to the baker, I can bring him out though...?"

"Oh! Yes, please bring him out, Colin said he could help if we wanted to order something custom."

James nodded, pretending that he knew quite what was going on, and stuck his head through the door to the kitchen.

"Uh, Paulie? Colin Wilson's girlfriend wants to speak with us."

Apparently this made much more sense to Paulie, because he nodded like this happened every day and followed James to the table that the women had commandeered in the storefront.

"That birthday cake was beautiful," one of the women said to Paul as they approached, "And it was absolutely delicious."

Paul blushed and thanked her, the picture of Midwestern courtesy, because he was nice to people who weren't James.

Getting right to business, the woman said, "We're helping to organize a holiday banquet fundraiser for the Nashville Predators Foundation. It's a charity gala where fans can meet the players, but the main focus will be the food and entertainment. After the amazing work you did with just a birthday cake, we thought you would be the perfect choice to do the dessert spread."

"We were thinking cookies," another woman jumped in excitedly, "Definitely Christmas cookies, and maybe like holiday cookies from different countries, because some of the guys are European. And then maybe cupcakes, and a large centerpiece cake?"

Paul nodded gamely, making notes on the pad of paper he'd swiped from behind the counter on their way over.

"Okay. How many guests were you expecting?"

The women exchanged glances.

"What do you think?" one said, looking at Colin's girlfriend, "Maybe like a thousand?"

"Yeah, that sounds about right. I think last year's numbers were about a thousand, when you remember that the players and staff are all eating too."

James didn't feel bad for having to pick his jaw up off the floor, because Paul had started to turn almost as red as his beard, his eyes so, so wide.

"Do you think you guys could do that by December 14th? I know it's kind of last minute for an order like this."

It was incredibly last minute for an order that size, especially when the holidays were one of their busiest times, but James didn't have to look at Paul to know that he was going to take the order. Getting that kind of exposure, getting their name on that kind of event, getting an order from the  _Nashville Predators_? They couldn't afford to turn that down, last minute or not.

"Tell me what exactly you're thinking of and we can talk numbers," Paul said, smiling as he pulled up a chair.

James went to the back office and started writing up a job posting for an assistant baker.

~~~

With the way that things had been going, James had almost let himself forget about Dick. It sounded strange, when they'd just taken the largest order of their lives from the guy's hockey team, but it wasn't like Dick or any of his teammates had placed the order themselves. And after the colossal order was made, it just came to be known as "the Preds order," and it really had nothing at all to do with Dick or hockey.

So James wasn't expecting to come back from making the afternoon deliveries one day in the middle of November to have Kuzya tell him, "Nealer! Hockey player come to see you!"

James had been planning on dodging his way through the front of the shop so that he could escape up to his third-story apartment and hide out the rest of his day on the couch (until he snuck down to Paulie's for dinner, of course), but he skidded to a stop halfway through the door to the kitchen at that.

"Uh, what?"

"Clune," Kuzya said with a nod, because of course he knew all of the Predators' names, "He ask for James, I tell him you gone."

James's heart didn't actually stop, but it felt like it took a pause.

"...Oh. Did, um, did he say anything else?"

Kuzya was clearly enjoying himself far too much because there was no reason for him to smile like that. "He order coffee, look very sad at mug."

"Did you draw a weagle in it?"

"I draw in everything, but he just order normal coffee. No foam." He shook his head like this was a horrible shame.

"Wait, what mug did you use?"

Kuzya made the face he always made when he thought James was crazy and wanted to make sure he knew it.

"White mug?"

"You didn't use his special mug?"

There was something a little sad about that. At least, James felt sad. He felt a lot of dumb ways about Rich Clune, though, especially seeing as the man had been avoiding him for months.

"Nealer, why Rich Clune have special mug?" Then Kuzya's eyes went wide. "Dicky!"

He immediately whipped out his phone, undoubtedly to text this important discovery to Carey.

James grimaced and crossed his arms.

"Look, did he say anything else?"

Kuzya waved him off, not bothering to look up from his phone.

"No, no, very sad, so sad, should have ordered weagle latte."

"Nobody  _ever_  orders that-"

A new customer came in, giving James's sour look a suitably perturbed expression as she approached the counter, and James decided to flee to the back before Kuzya took the bait and started chirping him for "scaring the customers with his face."

That still didn't stop him from pacing up and down the length of the kitchen, asking Paul what all of this was supposed to mean.

"It means he wanted to speak to you," Paul said, speaking loudly to be heard over the sound of the mixers. It hadn't taken James long to hire Ben, an incredibly tall guy from St. Louis with the sort of toothy grin that made James feel oddly compelled to hug him, as a new baking assistant, and ever since he'd been hired all he and Paul did every afternoon was make and freeze large batches of cookie dough for December. They were productive, for sure, but it meant that the kitchen was incredibly loud in the afternoons.

"Yes, but what does that  _mean_?" he whined.

"He probably wants to talk about what happened," Ben said. "You guys did leave things hanging."

James paused and frowned. "Paulie, have you been telling your minion about my romantic struggles?"

"He's my  _assistant_ ," Paul said primly.

"That doesn't answer my question."

"I'm pretty sure it does."

It didn't, but James supposed that the only person who really could answer that question was Dick. And seeing as James didn't have any way of contacting him, he would just have to wait until Dick came around again.

~~~

He didn't. James knew he had to be in town, not only because he was maybe following Nashville's scores online (he clicked out of any page that automatically played a video, but he was slowly inoculating himself to being around hockey again), but because Kuzya had thought it would be hilarious to post Nashville's game schedule behind the counter, and so James just happened to know where the Predators were at any given time. And he knew that Dick was in town with plenty of opportunity to stop by the bakery again, and he just...didn't. Which was fine. That was his prerogative.

James would just continue to tell himself that he wasn't disappointed and spend far too much time staring at that stupid, stupid mug.

December came upon them quickly, and given their newfound actual business, including actual customers who spent actual time in the actual storefront, James thought that they should up their holiday game a bit more from last year's single-wreath-on-the-door.

It was really just an excuse for him to go overboard at the store buying mini-lights and garlands and a small artificial Christmas tree, but Paulie and the minions all stopped judging him for it when he let them decorate their own stockings to hang on the edge of the counter.

Besides, within the first two days of the decorations being up they got three customer surveys complimenting their decor, and Carey said he'd caught more than a few customers trying to take artful photos of their peppermint-flavored drinks among the decorations, so clearly everyone else was enjoying it too.

The arrival of December also meant that customers went utterly batshit insane for holiday cookies. Despite all of the dough that Paul and Ben had spent November prepping, they were still concerned it wouldn't be enough. They made trays and trays of gingerbread and cutouts for the front every morning and they still sold out, and that wasn't counting all of the special orders. James had been shanghaied more than once into cookie decorating; Paul said he couldn't be trusted with fondant or cake frosting, but he had just the right level of talent for drawing bowties on gingerbread men.

He was pretty pleased with his level of talent, to be honest. All of his gingerbread men had smiley faces.

All of the cutouts didn't even begin to account for the other holiday cookies they sold. Pfeffernüsse, Mexican wedding cakes (which Kuzya insisted they call Russian tea cakes, even though Carey said they had absolutely no relation to Russia and James was more inclined to believe him), snickerdoodles, Linzer cookies, shortbread, peppermint sugar cookies...and those weren't counting all of the non-cookie holiday deserts they were making. Or rather, Paul and Ben were making.

James limited his cookie-making to the decorating, where it belonged.

A huge chunk of time was spent prepping the Preds order. The cake they'd ordered was massive, four tiers wrapped in layers of navy blue and gold fondant, made to look like it was covered in Preds-themed holiday ornaments. There were trays and trays of cupcakes to be baked, and enough cookies to feed a small army – evidently, some of them would be included in grab bags to take home. The whole order had to be prepped and ready to be delivered by noon the day of the gala. Though a lot of it could be made beforehand and stored in the freezer, a lot of the decorating still had to happen last-minute, meaning that the Saturday night before the gala, every employee of the bakery was crammed into the kitchen, frosting and icing and sprinkling like it was their sole purpose in life.

They all agreed that the bakery was staying closed Sunday, because nobody wanted to look at another confectionary after that.

Except James didn't have that luxury, because he was an owner and  _somebody_  had to deliver it all to the event venue. And seeing the number of boxes, it was only fair that he didn't have to do it all alone. So the morning of the gala, Paul and James carefully loaded everything into the back of James's car, with Paul sitting in the backseat like that would help him protect the stupidly large cake in the trunk, and they were off.

The gala was being held in a hotel ballroom, the type that James hadn't known existed prior to receiving the order. It was utterly humongous, and already packed with people arranging tables and strings of lights and electrical cables.

They didn't see anyone they recognized right away, and so it take James saying, "Hi, we're from the dessert bakery?" to at least five separate people, each of whom passed him up the chain of command to another person, until he found a harried looking woman with an id badge labeling her as some sort of staff member for the Nashville Predators.

"You brought the cake?" she said, cutting James off before he could say more. "Good, good, you can, uh...damn, you know what, set it up on that table over there, we'll move it later if we have to."

James didn't have to look to feel Paul frowning. "Uh, you know it's big, right? You might not want to move it if you can avoid it."

The look she gave him said that she was prepared to move this entire building and rearrange it if she had to in order to make her event a success, and so James and Paul shut their mouths and went back to the car for the cake.

The cake was, of course, a nightmare to move from the parking lot into the hotel. James had to grab a luggage cart to wheel it inside, because just safely picking the cake up from the back of his car was already an adventure in and of itself. There was no way they'd be able to safely carry it inside; James could just hear Stacey, their physical therapist back in Pittsburgh, screaming in his head about putting odd, unnecessary strain on their bodies. The hotel employees gave them dirty looks for stealing the cart, but James cheerfully ignored them, because the other half of the nightmare was getting the cake from the cart up onto the table.

He pitied whoever tried to move it again later, but they'd been warned, so he was washing his hands of it.

After that, bringing in box after box of cookies and cupcakes was practically a breeze, especially considering they went with James's idea of just using the cart for everything.

The bigger struggle was catching the woman from earlier and getting her to look everything over.

"We just need you to sign off that you received everything from your order."

She hadn't been the one to make the order, but it had clearly been communicated to her because she waved James off when he offered her the order form and made quick work of checking over the boxes. She looked at the cake and nodded, muttering, "Good, this is good."

A hand was thrust in James's direction; when he gave her the order sheet, she signed it quickly, barely looking at it, and shoved it back at him.

"Thank you for your business!" he called out as she stalked away, yelling at someone about where they were hanging garlands.

"Are deliveries always like this?" Paul murmured.

"Dude, the biggest events I usually deliver to are, like, expensive children's birthday parties and low-key weddings. This is something else entirely."

This meant a look into what their future could be like, if things kept trending upwards.

They were making their way back to the lobby, weaving between tables and scurrying event staff carrying all manner of boxes and trays, when Paul suddenly stopped short. James, pushing the luggage cart, just barely avoided driving it into his back and taking him out at the knees, like Paulie didn't have enough leg issues already.

"Dude, what?" James strained to see around both Paul and the cart, but he couldn't see much more than a crowd of people, which was pretty much par for the course right now.

Paul didn't turn to look at him, still watching whatever made him stop so suddenly. "I thought the event wasn't until tonight?"

"It's not, it's at, like, 6 or 7 or something. That's why shit's not finished yet."

"Okay." Paul half-turned now, just enough so that James could see his face. "Because the Nashville Predators are here."

Maybe it was dumb and a little masochistic of him, but nothing was going to stop James from scrambling out from behind the cart so that he could see what Paul was looking at.

James would admit that while he now knew who some of the Predators were by name, he had no clue what the majority of them looked like because he was still nominally avoiding everything to do with hockey. He knew that Paul was much the same, and so he probably wouldn't recognize anyone either.

But you didn't have to have been a hockey player to recognize who a roving pack of young athletic guys in snapbacks and overly stylish winter coats at a hockey team's gala must be.

James didn't recognize most of them – he was a little proud of himself for that, in a very strange way – but it didn't take long to spot one of the European kids from back in August, the one with the too-long hair. He was wearing a grey toque pulled down low over his ears and talking in a loud, rushed language that James couldn't understand to another guy who had a pair of headphones around his neck.

"I guess it is. Maybe they're doing, like, some sort of dress rehearsal? Because they're not dressed up?"

"Who needs a dress rehearsal on how to eat a dinner?" Paul muttered derisively, shaking his head.

James refrained from reminding him that even back when they'd been hockey players, Paul had always been more socially adept and courteous than any of their teammates. Not everyone knew how to eat a dinner like a mature adult and make small talk with fans, even when their driver's license said they were 25 years old.

They should have gone. They should have kept their heads down and blended in with the rest of the staff running to and fro like their scarily efficient manager might appear and yell at them for carrying boxes the wrong way if they stopped to breathe for a moment. They should have dumped the cart like they'd planned and gone home to catch the Vikings game on the NFL Network, because if Rich Clune had wanted to speak with James again, he would have left him a message or come back to see him again.

But no, James and Paul stood there and watched the Nashville Predators come closer and closer, staring like idiots in their new black  _Herb's Electronics_  t-shirts James had ordered to improve brand recognition. James had lived through a slow-motion car accident, had seen the oncoming headlights getting brighter and brighter until they engulfed the whole rain-splattered windshield and taken that split-second moment to ponder at how it felt like he should be doing something to save himself, and yet all he could do was marvel at how this wasn't supposed to be something that happened to him.

This moment felt eerily similar to that.

"Hey, is that- oh my God, hey, man, good to see you!" Colin Wilson grinned like they were old friends and strolled right up to James, shaking his hand and pulling him into some sort of bro-hug as if James wasn't just the guy who delivered his girlfriend's birthday cake.

"It's so awesome that you guys are here, Steph told me she and the girls went to you guys to do the desserts. They all thought the cake was amazing, so I know whatever you made tonight is going to be just as good. You're Paul, right?"

He held out a hand to Paul, still smiling like maybe he really didn't need to breathe between sentences. Paul in his typical Paulie-way took it with aplomb, introducing himself and thanking Colin for his business.

By now they'd drawn the attention of the rest of the team, who were watching with interest. Some guy James didn't recognize said to one of the European kids, "Wait, are they the guys you got those cupcakes from?", and then James and Paul were suddenly very popular. Apparently Paul's baked goods had made for a memorable end-of-summer preseason party.

While Paul, the identified baker, was getting caught up in a sea of well-deserved praise, James's traitorous eyes were scanning the crowd for...

"James?"

He would admit that he jumped when he heard Dick's voice behind him, but only so he didn't have to say how his breath caught and his words stuck in his throat when he spun around and came face to face with Dick for the first time in over three months.

"Dick," he breathed, voice hoarse.

Dick quirked a small smile, huffing quietly in amusement.

"You know, when most people call me that, they really mean it," he said.

James nodded, knowing his eyes were way too wide and sincere. "I totally mean it."

Dick laughed, quiet and close and something almost like tender. He reached out a hand as if to touch James's arm, and then his hand dropped along with his eyes and he cleared his throat. James was almost disappointed.

"You, uh. I heard you left."

"Left what?'

Dick actually looked uncomfortable, eyes flicking to James's face and then off to the side at the scrum of his teammates. He tucked his thumbs in his front pockets like that might keep him from trying to reach out and touch again.

James wished he would.

"I went into the shop," he said. "Because, I, uh...I figured we should talk, without my teammates around, because I was pretty sure we were on our way to starting something this summer, and then the guys wanted to come meet you and see this place I kept talking about and I think maybe I, uh..."

"You ambushed me," James chirped, sounding brighter than he felt.

It was a little cathartic, to see Dick nod guiltily.

"Yeah. They meant well, but, uh, it shouldn't have happened like that. I promise, when I ask people out, I don't usually bring a bunch of teammates with me to ask on my behalf. I was pretty mad at them for that, it made me look like I couldn't do it on my own."

"And then you flaked on me for three months."

Dick's mouth smoothed into a thin white line, and he took an audible breath before dragging his gaze up to meet James's.

"Yeah. Yeah, I did, I – I really fucked that up, Jimmy, and I'm sorry for that." James tried to ignore the way the butterflies in his stomach thrilled at the nickname.

"It took me a long fucking time and a lot of moping to get my head around the idea that you never said no, never actually gave me an answer at all, and that maybe I should go back and ask you out the right way, for real, before I called it quits. But then I went there and there was someone else working the counter, and I know you're the only barista who works there. But he said you were gone, and your plaque was off the wall, and I thought...shit, I thought maybe you'd quit."

Well, that just didn't make any goddamn sense.

"Okay, first of all, I knocked the plaque off the wall myself in a tragic mopping accident, and I haven't got around to putting it back up yet. Second, how the hell would I quit?"

Dick squinted at him like  _he_  was the one being crazy.

"Uh, you'd get fed up with shitty customers insulting your coffee and decide to ply your talents elsewhere?"

"Thank you for acknowledging my many and varied talents, but it's really hard to quit your own business."

"...I'm sorry?"

James rolled his eyes, slowly, so that he was sure that Dick could see it and feel the full force of his scorn.

"Dick, I'm the owner. Paulie and I  _own_  the bakery. Do you think I'd fucking swear at my customers if I had a boss to answer to?"

"I thought you only swore at me."

And goddammit, but he actually looked sad at the prospect of James swearing at someone else. He had to lock this down, because there was no way he was going to find a better guy. Even if Dick  _was_  a professional hockey player.

"I  _did_  only swear at you, numbnuts. I only insult the ones I like."

And there was that smirk, the smarmy, cocky, shit-eating grin that gave Dick his name. He fell into an artful slouch, resting back on the laurels of a flirtation well-returned.

"Well then, I have to say, you must have liked me a whole-"

"I'm so sorry to interrupt, but I have to ask: you're James Neal, right? And that's Paul Martin?"

James would have cursed at the new guy for his bad timing, but he was too busy trying to figure out who the hell he was and how he knew James and Paul's full names when James knew for a fact that they weren't on their website.

He had a sinking feeling that he knew how a hockey player knew their names, and it wasn't really something he wanted to talk about now, especially not when he was maybe, finally starting to work things out with Dick.

"Uh, yeah. What can I do for you, uh...?"

He trailed off purposely, waiting for the guy to fill in the blanks.

"Oh! I'm Craig Smith," the guy said, as if he'd expected James to know that already. He held out a hand, which James shook hesitantly.

"You wouldn't know me, we never actually met, but I just, I remembered hearing about you guys when I was in school."

James could feel his smile grow brittle on his face, crystalline.

"I'm sorry?"

"You went to school in Pittsburgh, right? God, it was all over the news when you were in that accident, it was all anybody on the team could talk about, even out in Wisconsin."

James could feel Dick's eyes on him, concerned, questioning, could see more of his teammates listening with interest, and just like those oncoming headlights, there was nothing he could do to stop it.

"Two college players with NHL scouts coming out to see them – wasn't one of you even Mr. Hockey in high school? – and then, with what happened... I mean, they said the other guy fell asleep at the wheel and drifted into your lane, right? A head-on collision. And I'm sorry, I don't mean to pry, but I remember they said one of you had your ankle crushed, from the console getting pushed in, and the other one, something happened with the driver's side where-"

"My airbag didn't go off." James smiled grimly, feeling a little part of him die all over again.

His airbag didn't go off, and his seatbelt couldn't save him from slamming chest-first into the steering wheel. They said his ribs fractured on impact, half of his chest caving inwards, clawing at the organs the bones were meant to protect. Supposedly he'd had a punctured lung, and when Paul had slowly regained consciousness, he'd had to sit there, pinned by the wreckage, thinking that James might be dead because apparently it's hard to hear someone breathe when they have a collapsed lung.

James didn't remember any of that, because he'd been unconscious as soon as his head cracked against the top of the steering wheel. He hadn't woken up until he was in the hospital, his head and chest an array of fluffy white gauze bandages, with a doctor standing over him telling how lucky he was to be alive.

He would never forget the way her smile had gone tight and forced when he'd asked if he'd ever be able to play hockey again. Sometimes even doctors found it was easier not to have to say things out loud.

"That's right! Because there was that whole talk about suing the manufacturer because of the defect, and I remember they were having all of these fundraisers to help pay for the medical care. God, I'm so sorry, I know you were in the hospital for a long time after that, the both of you. Paul, his ankle had to-"

"Paulie's fine now," James interrupted.

Paul's left ankle had been absolutely destroyed, and he was lucky he hadn't lost a foot. It was now mostly held together with pins and plates and prayers, but after more than a year of physical therapy, Paul had been able to walk again, unaided, and now he only limped if he pushed himself too hard or stayed on his feet too long. On slow days, James would make Paul sit down at his work bench while James went around the kitchen fetching things for him, just like Paul didn't like letting James pick up heavy things off the ground. They took care of each other, after the accident. They both knew they were the only ones who really understood, could ever truly understand.

"Oh! Yeah, of course." Smith flushed, like maybe he was only just realizing how his whole recitation of the worst moment in James's life sounded. "I didn't mean to- I wasn't trying to be rude. I honestly just wanted to say that you both look really great, and I'm really happy for you. Also, those pecan tarts are seriously one of the best things I've ever tasted in my life."

James forced himself to make his smile a bit more genuine, because even if this guy was a little socially inept, he meant well, and James couldn't dislike someone who complimented Paulie's baking.

Smith nodded and flashed him a smile, and then looked at Dick with a sort of apologetic wince before slipping back in with the rest of his teammates.

Which left James with Dick, who was watching him with an expression that James didn't even want to parse, afraid of what he'd find there.

The only thing worse than pity from fans would be pity from a professional hockey player. Especially one that James had been about to finally ask on a date.

"I didn't know you played hockey," Dick said quietly.

"That's because I don't." The words felt sharp in his mouth, and maybe that's why a little bit of James felt like he was bleeding.

Dick nodded like maybe he'd deserved that. "I guess I just..."

Then he stood up straight and shook his head, a look of steely resolve crossing his face.

"You know what, no. I'm not going to ask, and you don't have to tell me anything more than what you want to. If you never want to tell me what happened, that's fine. I'm not going to look it up. It's none of my business. All I care about is if you'll agree to overlook my many, many faults and character flaws and go on a date with me, because if I don't ask you now I'm afraid we'll never get our chance."

James watched him for a long moment, trying to tamp down on his incredulous smile.

"You'll let it go, just like that?"

This time, when Dick reached out to put a hand on James's arm, he let it rest there, warm and sure.

"Jimmy, I'm a horrible person and I've done a lot of horrible things. I'm an open book about my past because that's the only way I can move on from it and try to be better. But I don't expect that from everyone else, and right now I'll take whatever you're willing to give me."

James smiled, caught up in the warm brown of his eyes. Better late than never, even if he was a hockey player.

"How about my number?"

The smile that Dick gave him said that it was more than enough.

James and Paul had to leave right after, because the terrifying manager lady appeared and was very stressed out about why none of the players had shown up yet for their pre-gala information session. Apparently hockey players really did need a dress rehearsal on how to eat dinner.

But by the time they'd finally driven back to the shop and trudged their way upstairs to Paul's floor, James had already received a text from an unknown number that was just a series of cat emojis, followed by yellow and blue hearts.

"You guys are disgusting already," Paul groaned. He hadn't even seen the texts, just took one look at James's face and put his head in his hands.

"Hey Paulie," James said. "What do you think about maybe watching hockey tonight?"

Paul slowly raised his head, his glasses askew, squinting at James as if trying to search out a lie.

"Are you sure? Just because you're going to date a hockey player doesn't mean you have to watch it."

"No, I know that. I just...I think it's time, y'know? Maybe we can give it a try."

Paul watched him carefully, saying nothing for a long, long moment. He sighed, and he nodded.

"Alright. Fine. Is there a game on right now that we have to miss the Vikings for?"

James squinted down at the NHL app on his phone, trying very hard to quash that dumb, fluttery feeling in his stomach.

"Uh...supposedly on the NHL Network the Wild are still scoreless against the Leafs ten minutes into the first?"

He and Paul looked at each other and then nodded as one.

"I'll miss football if it means I can watch my home team destroy yours in another sport," Paul said, grabbing for the remote.

James would have protested, but he was too busy searching for a hockey emoji to send to Dick.

Maybe dating a hockey player wouldn't be so bad.

~~~

He revised that thought the next morning when Carey popped his head into his office. "Just so you know, there's an NHL player lurking out front looking for you."

"Wait, he's here now?" It wasn't even eleven, and Dick never showed up before noon.

"Yeah. I asked if he wanted something, but he said he wants you to make his drink. I don't know why, but I don't really care. If you could just go deal with him, I'd appreciate it. I left Montreal so I could take a break from hockey players, you know?"

No, James absolutely didn't know, and he had so many questions, but part of his unspoken deal with Carey was that neither of them asked the other about their reasons for leaving Canada to move to Tennessee, so he kept his mouth shut.

"Uh, yeah, I'll come out front."

Carey nodded, patted the doorframe and walked off. He didn't head back towards the front of the shop; James had no clue where he was going, actually, but when walked out of his office and into the kitchen, Carey was nowhere to be seen.

He thought about asking Ben if he saw where Carey went, just because Ben was working at a table across from the office and would have had to have seen where he went, but he decided it wasn't worth it. Ben would just say he had no clue while giving that little smile that said he knew exactly where Carey was but wasn't saying. Those two were in league with each other, honestly.

When James came through to the front, Dick was there leaning against the display case, as per usual. He perked up when he saw James, standing upright and giving him a real smile, bright and toothy, not just the little smirk James usually got.

"Hey. Your plaque's back on the wall. And, uh, you added to it."

James looked over his shoulder. He'd put his plaque back up, or rather, he'd supervised while Carey did it because James could never get things to hang quite straight. He had however been the one to print off an impressively grainy black and white picture of Ben on a piece of copy paper and tape it to the wall with the words  _Employee of the Month_  written across the bottom in black marker.

"Well, I figured I had to give the minions something to compete for. Keeps them on their toes. Plus, Ben's my favorite, and you can tell them all that I said that."

It was only what they all deserved, what with Carey disappearing like that and Kuzya being Kuzya. Ben never had a rude thing to say about James. Ben was the only good egg.

"I don't think your other guy liked me very much anyway," Dick said, probably referring to Carey. "But that's fine, because I wanted you to make my drink anyway."

James snorted, leaning against the counter on his elbows. Their faces were only inches apart, and Dick looked more than pleased with that.

"Are you saying that I went out and hired actual baristas who can  _actually_  make good coffee and you still want my garbage? You don't have to flatter me, I already agreed to go on a date with you."

Dick smiled, a quick involuntary thing like it made him happy just to remember that.

"I've gotten used to your way with coffee," he said, "It might stun my palate if I tried something else."

James didn't bother hiding his eye-roll, because it was only what Dick deserved.

"Yeah, sure. What'll you have?"

Dick made a point of reading the menu, even though it hadn't changed a bit since he'd first started coming in over the summer.

"In the spirit of the holidays, how about a peppermint mocha latte?"

"It's your funeral," James muttered, but he was smiling as he finally got to grab Dick's special mug out from under the counter.

There was no way he could miss the softening of Dick's eyes as they landed on the mug.

"You kept it."

James scoffed. "Of course I did. It's yours, it wasn't mine to get rid of."

"But I ghosted you for months."

James could only shrug as he started adding ingredients to the mug. "Still wasn't mine to get rid of. And..."

"And?"

His eyes cut over to Dick, and he didn't try to hide his smile. "And I was kind of hoping you'd be back, eventually."

At least his smile wasn't nearly as embarrassing as Dick's, wide and expressive as he leaned over the counter.

"You know why I first came in here?" he asked James.

"Because you mistakenly thought we made coffee here?"

Dick huffed and shook his head, still smiling. His eyes never once left James.

"You're going to laugh at me, but I actually came here because when I first saw the sign, I thought this was actually a used electronics store."

James stopped what he was doing, hand frozen on the steam wand. "You're shitting me."

"Not one bit," Dick said, shaking his head. "I saw it from a distance and thought you guys sold electronics. My brothers and I like to try our hand at making movies in the summer, but that sort of equipment isn't cheap, even when you make the kind of money I do. I always try to keep an eye out for places I might be able to find discount equipment."

There was no way that James could keep himself from laughing at that as he finally started steaming the milk. "So you come looking for movie equipment, and instead..."

"And  _instead_ , I get up to the window and I figure out right away that it's clearly not an electronics store, because there are cakes in the window and a coffee menu behind the counter. And I don't usually drink a lot of coffee, and I especially don't eat a lot of baked goods, so I was ready to be on my merry way.

"And  _then_ , I see this guy go to hand a drink to a customer, and he just flings the whole cup across the counter, absolutely strafes the whole storefront in coffee. I'm standing outside and I'm fucking  _dying_ , even though I feel bad because he's got to make the guy a whole new cup.

"But he's really fucking cute, pretty eyes, great smile. What sealed the deal was when he was on the floor cleaning up the spill."

Dick smirked then, conspiratorial and dickish as always, and said, "He had a  _killer_  ass, you know. That's what finally got me in the door."

James knew it wasn't the heat from the machines that made him blush, but he refused to duck his head. "So you came for the electronics, stayed for my ass?"

"Well it certainly wasn't the coffee."

James was laughing as he put a dollop of whipped cream on top of the drink and sprinkled it with peppermint pieces.

"God, you're such a dick," he said, handing over the drink. Dick made sure their fingers brushed for much longer than necessary; James's hand tingled as he pulled it away.

"You know," Dick said, smiling over the top of his mug, "If we're going to be dating, you should probably start calling me Rich."

"Maybe if you behave yourself over dinner tonight and stop giving me reasons to call you that."

Rich froze with the drink halfway to his lips. "We're going to dinner tonight?"

"If you behave," James sniffed primly. He could only hold the expression for a moment before he started smiling. Rich shook his head.

"Then I'm fucked, and not in a good way." He winked, clearly pleased with the way James started flushing all over again, and took a sip of his drink.

Then he made a face, looking down at the mug with a frown.

"Jimmy. You know I love your new and exciting approach to coffee, but is there actually any coffee in this drink?"

James froze. "...Oooh. You know what, I thought I was forgetting something, but I couldn't quite place what it was."

"You forgot to put coffee in the coffee?"

"I forgot to put coffee in your sugar and cream," James said with his sweetest smile.

Rich shook his head. "It's no more than I deserve, I guess." He still took another sip anyway, like sugary peppermint milk might improve with time. Based on his expression, it really didn't.

"Well, even if you can't make coffee, at least you have a nice ass," Rich said, patting James's hand in consolation. As if James couldn't tell he was teasing, he turned James's hand over in his own, entwining their fingers.

They were both examining the way that their hands looked intertwined when Rich added, "Your hair could still use some work though."

_"Dick!"_

**Author's Note:**

> Assorted notes: Kuznetsov, Price, and Bishop were chosen as the shop employees by random suggestions from my followers on Tumblr, who had no clue what kind of fic I was writing other than that it was in the food service industry and they couldn't pick a Preds player.
> 
> Both "I like my sugar with coffee and cream" and "too sweet to be sour" are lines in the Beastie Boys song Intergalactic. Rich Clune also once did the ["man of the hour too sweet to be sour" line](https://swedishgoaliemafia.tumblr.com/post/108240939149) which is why I picked it for the title. Sure Shot is another Beastie Boys song.
> 
> Rich Clune and his brothers really do try their hand at making their own movies over the summer, when Dicky isn't trying to become a professional model (that's actually true).
> 
> Re: leaving a fully decorated cake on your counter for years, my friend is a professional baker, and I asked her if those display cakes you see in bakery windows (or in your grocery store bakeries), the ones that are never changed out, are fondant over some sort of foam base. She said no, they're usually real cakes, and that there's one on the counter of the bakery she works at that's been there longer than her, and she's worked there for over three years, so yeah, they get, uh, concerningly old. But she also said nobody ever dusts them which I think is honestly the stranger part.
> 
> Catch me over at [swedishgoaliemafia on Tumblr](https://swedishgoaliemafia.tumblr.com/)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Too Sweet to Be Sour by McSpot](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14925978) by [Hellspot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hellspot/pseuds/Hellspot)




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